Damn United – 7

Timothy Spall is not your normal love interest, in a buddy pic no less; nor is it usual to find a biopic about a soccer coach failing big-time, although the film adds a true-life documentary PS that shows everything coming out right. After portraying Tony Blair and David Frost in somewhat similar equivocal roles, Michael Sheen goes all out as Brian Clough, an ambitious, conceited jerk, really, whom we have to root for – partly because everyone else in the story, Spall excepted, is worse. One thing I missed was any sense of why Clough was such a successful coach (“the best manager the national team never had”), especially when he spent the games in the stands or, in one case, in the locker room. An English moviegoer would undoubtedly have known more than me and presumably had quite a different take.